U.S. leadership key to MDG progress

With the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Summit in New York this week — and the MDG deadline only five years away — the world is watching to see if Washington seizes this opportunity to show leadership in the fight against global hunger and disease.

There are many in the U.S. NGO community, as well as impoverished people around the world, who believe this is the moment for President Barack Obama to turn talk about development into concrete action.

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Ground-breaking initiatives like President Obama’s signature Feed the Future program and Global Health Initiative are being pursued across the U.S. government. Essential, internally-led reforms are underway in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to strengthen core capacities — including the reestablishment of budget and policy planning functions, as well as improvements in human resource and procurement practices.

Yet, the Obama administration has a long way to go to build the architecture that would make U.S. foreign aid more effective and accountable for the 21st century. With budgets tightening and global challenges growing, this is beginning to look like a huge missed opportunity.

Reforming U.S. foreign aid would make certain taxpayer dollars are used efficiently to drive sustainable growth and development. Advocates and reformers have been anxiously awaiting the release of a new global development policy, which the Obama Administration has promised in coming weeks, to see how concrete progress will be made on this issue.

At this summer’s G-8 Summit in Canada, and in the recently released U.S. Strategy for Meeting the MDGs, the Administration laid out the elements of its new development approach — including promoting economic growth and good governance, bolstering accountability and helping recipient states take more ownership of their development. The MDG strategy also promised to “modernize and strengthen our capacity to support countries to achieve sustainable development outcomes.” These documents offer a solid outline of the way forward.

What they do not do is delve into how we can put such ideas into action, particularly on the modernization pledge. And at least one critical question has been left unanswered: Will the State Department keep control of U.S. development efforts or will USAID be empowered?

This issue has bedeviled and divided policymakers for decades. Though it may seem overly bureaucratic, it is not. The choice is whether our development programs are tied to State’s short-term political necessities, or whether we allow our development agency to lead the way and focus on sustainable, long-term results.